UK households face 'growing' mental health issue affecting those with certain income

New research has revealed a growing mental phenomena sweeping the UK, which may only affect those with a certain income. Money dysmorphia - the high earners convinced they are poor - are on the rise up and down the UK, it is feared.

One worker who earns more than $150,000 describes "crippling panic around her finances and getting “crazy flipped” by decisions related to money. “I won’t even buy the more comfortable $15 lawn chairs,” she told the Financial Times.

Patti thinks she may suffer from “money dysmorphia”. A key symptom is a profound anxiety about wealth that goes beyond the standard concerns such as the cost of living crisis or worries over the threat of a recession.

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43 per cent of generation Z and 41 per cent of millennials are experiencing money dysmorphia. “Childhood patterns are extremely important,” says US financial therapist Maggie Baker. “Most parents think if you just teach the facts of money . . . and help them develop a bank account, that’s the way you teach about money. [But] the emotional aspect of money is far more important."

“These patterns are so deeply set that even the most rational argument is not going to move somebody,” she says. “[The term] really does resonate with the evidence that we have compiled in the social mobility literature,” says Professor Lee Elliot Major, a scholar of social mobility at Exeter university.

Professor Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert from Exeter University, stumbled upon this behaviour while studying how people move up and down the class ladder. As someone who’s climbed to middle-class status himself, he's not immune to these worries either.

Recounting his earlier days, he said: "In my early life, there were times I really had to watch the money. Even though your economic situation changes, your attitude doesn’t. You never quite lose the memory of worrying about how you will find the cash to get through the next week."